A family in Greek mythology, the House of Atreus starts with Tantalus. Tantalus starts off holding the favor of the Gods but pushes his luck when he decides to cook his own son, Pelops, and feed him to the Gods as a test of their omniscience. This, of course, is a very bad idea and the Gods, being omniscient, find out. They throw Tantalus in the underworld where he must suffer thirst and hunger with water and food just out of his grasp for all of eternity. The Gods bring Pelops back to life and cursed the family.

Pelops has two sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes begins an affair with Atreus' wife, and in retaliation, Atreus kills all of Thyestes' sons and feeds them to him in a pie. Thyestes responded by asking an oracle what to do, who advised him to have a son by his daughter, Pelopia, who would then kill Atreus. This son is Aegisthus, who does just that, although not before Atreus had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who became the brother-in-law and husband (respectively) of Helen (later of Troy).

Prior to sailing off to Troy, Agamemnon annoyed the goddess Artemis. As a result, Agamemnon's fleet cannot catch a wind, and thus can't sail. A prophet named Calchas tells him that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon must sacrifice his one of his daughters, Iphigenia. He does so, and sets sail. While he is fighting the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra, infuriated by the murder of her daughter, begins an affair with Aegisthus. When Agamemnon returned home from the war, he brought home with him a new concubine, the prophetess Cassandra. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus then murder Agamemnon and Cassandra. Agamemnon's son, Orestes,goaded by his sister Electra, must avenge his father's death but in doing so, must kill his mother. Orestes was still quite young when Agamemnon was killed by Clytemnestra. He was sent into exile and swore revenge. He was torn between avenging his father and not killing his mother. “It was a son’s duty to kill his father’s murderers, a duty that came before all others. But a son who killed his mother was abhorrent to gods and to men.” When he asked Apollo for advice, the god advised him to kill his mother. “And Orestes knew that he must work out the curse of his house, exact vengeance and pay with his own ruin.” After Orestes murdered Clytemnestra, he wandered the lands with guilt in his heart. After many years, he pleaded to Athena with Apollo by his side. No man of Atreus had ever done something so noble and “neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.” Orestes therefore ends the curse of the House of Atreus.

External Links

• The House of Atreus: A Note on the Mythological Background to the Oresteia